Alright so I streamed the game for a few hours tonight and I've gotta say I was pretty surprised... The game is actually quite good and that was something I wasn't expecting both in early expectations nor after the demo. I'll try to give a brief overview of what I thought worked well and what didn't...
- Combat was a lot better then we got in the demo. Having more then one character in your party makes the combat a lot better. The AI is pretty awful both for your own characters and enemies but it works well enough for the most part. Only real issue I had was Sonia would seem to taunt enemies and then run away and guard at times even when they'd stop attacking her and focus on Yuma who I was using to attack. I could thankfully order her to just go and attack but it felt like something I shouldn't have to do. Also no way I've seen so far to directly control what abilities the party is using. I wanted Kirika to use Gaia to attack an enemy but couldn't find a way to make her do that only the short commands like 'attack enemy' and what not. Also no easy way to Switch characters in or out of battle, have to directly go into the menu to swap, wouldn't be a big deal but when a certain form... acts up you lose control over that character. Maybe theres an option for it or something that unlocks but I couldn't figure it out as I was playing.
- The story and characters are pretty generic thus far but at least do get quite a bit of interaction a lot in the story but also a optional scenes as well. You can invite the other characters out to talk before you rest at the inn at night which opens up additional conversations, also I was looking through the trophies and apparently you can also go on dates as well. Diving pretty hard into that visual novel aspect XD
- Despite the obvious sexual designs the fanservice has been damn well near non-existent so far. No lewd comments, the camera doesn't seem to focus on the girls assets in any particular way but thats likely because almost all cut scenes are done like in a visual novel. I'm assuming once you start getting deeper into the relationship elements things might change but so far I'm rather impressed with how tasteful the game has been.
- The optional elements are great. You've got optional conversations with NPC's that provide world building and develop various NPC's in the story while also having a ton of side quests that offer relatively small rewards but are completely optional from what I've seen so far. Only bad part about the quests has been that they are very MMO like (kill 8 of this goblin, collect 5 of these tomatoes you find on the ground) with some of them being drops from enemies and the drop rates not exactly being very high. Thankfully rewards are so far somewhat limited so I haven't felt like its a big deal if I just flat out didn't want to do the quests.
- The Voice acting is surprisingly good, some cringy dialog to work with at times but the actors themselves do a great job. While the whole game isn't voiced a majority of the cut scenes seem to be so thats good.
Flat out I would say if you are a fan of the Tales of series I would highly recommend picking up this game, I was expecting a game like the Tales of series but worse but its on par with some of the better games in that series at least what I've played so far. It's not going to set the world on fire but if you are looking to scratch that itch and understand going into it what the game is I think you might be surprised how enjoyable it actually is.
Nice! I just got started and am liking the visuals, audio, and how the game feels.
Great to hear, I'm liking the voices and in the demo as well so the more the better. :)
If the partial voice list over on behind the voice actors is right then I'm going to really like the English VAs.
Thanks for the write-up! the gorgeous character designs were what initially drew me to the game, and I'm a sucker for visual novel aspects in my JRPG's so this all sounds pretty good to me. Are you using the JP voices or the English voices? Sonia's English voice in the demo didn't agree with me.
Yup, the character designs are gorgeous. The models and portraits look great.
I liked her voice heh, then again I love Dorothy Fahn's voice thanks to many of the characters she's played in other games and anime.
Okay so tell me: how is the Music? Do we know who the composer is?
Looks like several members of Elements Garden all worked together on it. Junpei Fujita is one of them listed on the wiki and on the Elements Garden homepage under Shining Resonance.
http://www.ariamusic.co.jp/elements-garden/fujita/
Edit: Looks like Junpei Fujita and Hitoshi Fujima are the two that have the game listed on that page.
Went to a friend's stream and told him to not attack and see what happens. Just like the demo.
Yeah, no idea but I expect it's going to be pretty easy in this regard. Though maybe later enemies just get super aggressive to make up for it lol.
